The Flo News

Norma Moore White-Tailed Deer by Norma Moore

Our story this week is about the most loved wild animal that our Flo people have roaming our properties. The white-tailed deer have been a part of our area even before the lands were inhabited by the Native American Indians and the Spanish on up until our pioneer ancestors settled. They didn’t see the beauty, gentleness and charm as our people do today. They were food for men’s tables and hides for trading and use in their homes. The early Native American tribes traded the hides and meat with one another for spears and other things to supplement their daily lives. These early settlers along with the Spanish found the deer and other wildlife in this area very desirable and plentiful. Every part of the animal was used.

The early white settlers to the Flo area came when Stephen F. Austin urged people to move here with reasonable priced, rich farmland. The plentiful deer and game provided the weary travelers with much needed meat. This area was rich with deer and provided for the pioneer settlers who made it to this area (Kidd’s Mill, Oden Settlement, Flo, etc.) There was a time, according to stories from the early settlers, that the deer migrated away from this area for some unknown reason. Eventually Texas wildlife management imported deer back into this area along with wild turkeys.

White-tailed deer are native to the USA (with the exception of California, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah and Alaska. They exist as far north as Canada and as far south as Peru in South America. The deer’s coat is reddish-brown in spring and summer and turns a grey-brown in fall and through the winter. They are easily recognized by the white on the underside of their tails which they raise whenever they are alarmed. They eat acorns, cacti, grasses, corn, hay, the shots and leaves of plants. They can eat mushrooms and Red Sumac, things that humans can’t, because of a special four-chambered stomach.

The people in our area still hunt the deer for food, trophies and to keep the population from going unchecked. Many people here just enjoy seeing them and observing their beauty and ways.